I’ve been trying to eliminate magical thinking for the last year. No more

And the anniversary of Roe V Wade.

The question this year is: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My wish (said in total Pinky and Brain speak) is the same one I have every day. I want bodily autonomy to be as much a right as freedom of speech. No one should ever be allowed to control what I do to my own body or how I do it. And no one, not a rapist or a nurse with a godbag agenda or a bunch of old white male politicians in ugly blue suits should ever be able to take that away from me or any other person.

I want that in the constitution cause these dudes should never be allowed near a uterus again.

Micheal Lind has been running a series on Salon about how to fix the economy, and while I disagree with him on some things (complete elimination of corporate taxes, for example) I think there is a lot there to be impressed with. There’s also a lot of things that I’ve been saying since forever- so yay me.

Today he writes about an economic bill of rights based on FDR’s plan.

Check out the rest of the series. It’s pretty good. And I hope our new dear leader is listening, cause so far his plans don’t do anything that we really need.

The lovely Susan from That’s Me On The Left has tagged me with the 6 things meme. I think I’ve done this before, but I’m sure there’s more than 6 things about me in the world.

1. I was a magazine cover girl at age 4. Just one small trade magazine, but there ya go. I was also in the newspapers a couple of times and on tv twice, once for cheerleading and once in high school being interviewed by the local news on HIV testing for high school seniors (I was all for it)

2. At the moment I have the world’s most gnarliest hangnail. And I’m a giant baby about it.

3. I gave my kid the name he has because every guy I ever met with his name was hot. Seriously. I was 19 though, so I should be given some leeway for picking that name for that reason.

4.I make up twisted lyrics to songs all the time. All. The. Time. Grandma got run over by a reindeer has been Bambi got run over by a John Deer for years.

5. Ruth likes watching cooking shows with me because of the faces I make when they cook something awful. Paula Dean, Sandra Lee and that doochebag with the scary bleach blonde hair are the main focus of my wrath. And I will totally scream at the tv if they start to burn their garlic! (PS- we also totally think Tyler Florence is gay gay gay. And closeted. But gay.)

6. The older I get, the more squeamish I get. I have to hide my eyes when anything gross happens on tv and the other day I had to leave the room when someone was describing their bloody mucus. I used to be much better about that kind of stuff, but now I get all nauseous and woozy.

So who to tag?

I tag you if you’re reading this since I think I’ve tagged everyone and then some all ready. Drop me a linky in comments.

sums up exactly what I’m feeling. And it ain’t good.

Sacrifice? Be the change?

What more do I have to sacrifice? We have no money. Every month it’s another round of pay rent or eat (this month both lost to some extent). I have no health care, so I can’t give that up. I was kinda hoping that I might actually get healthcare from a Democratic government, but that got pushed aside for banking reforms.

I’ve sacrificed finishing my education. There’s no money for that. Next year I’m sacrificing my kid’s public education. There will be one less child sucking on the educational teat. A special needs kid at that. Is that enough sacrifice?

And I’ve been the change, since I was a tiny girl stomping her feet in patent leather shoes. The only thing left for me to change into is a Republican. And no body wants that. Or do they?

I want to see billionaires sacrifice their private jets to taxes so that schools can have smaller class sizes. I want to see Halliburton and KBR sacrifice the Iraq war cash they’ve disappeared like Pinochet’s prisoners to their rape victim employees. I want to see health insurance sacrificed to make room for healthcare.

I want to see Wall Street bankers be the change by giving their bonuses paid with TARP money back to the government. I wanna see the Big 3 car makers be the change by developing green cars and green jobs.

I am the change, I’ve been the change. I’ve given up 5 years making sure that students go into the world knowing how to use computers and get a job without a raise or benefits for myself. I don’t have anything left to give, except my voice. And I’ve been giving that away for free since I learned to talk.

to this article in the NY Times

is this video

Go wax faux nostalgic at this piece. Really, it’s worth the read.

I am allergic to lavender. It gives me migraines and makes me want to vomit. You were the one that liked it, not me. They way that long red nails creep you out is what the smell of lavender does to me, only with vomit. (For the readers- I may be the first person in history to have become nauseous in sight of the legendary lavender fields of Provence. Thank god that french pharmacists understand the word “migraine”)

The books- one I already own and the other is written by a hack. But Ruth said she’d see if she could sell them since what we really need is grocery money.

We are fiercely agnostic. And I mean fierce. Every time you send the Kid some ridiculous religious piece of jewelry I get the desire to burn down St. James. But then we just make fun of how hideously ugly the religious tokens you send are and the problems with crazy religious freaks and their belief in the magic sky fairy who try to push their beliefs onto rational people.

And the idea you have of who the Kid is and what he likes is off. Stop trying to push your fantasy onto him. He’s his own person, more so because I don’t let people like you push him into being what you need him to be. That’s why you don’t get to come withing a thousand yards of him. You’re a fucking grown up, leave the Kid alone.

Presents, when obviously chosen because you 1) don’t know shit about us and 2) think you know shit because you’ve been creepily stalking my blog are creepy! Way to make someone feel uncomfortable about having to accept a gift they don’t want and don’t like. And did I mention creepy.

And creepy. Has anyone ever told you that you have serious boundary issues? Cause you do. Stop trying to cross mine. You do not get to be part of our lives. Not now, not ever. We’ve made peace with that. You need to make peace with that too. Hold a mock funeral for us if you like and if it will make you feel some closure. You have one child now, I suggest you focus on him.

PS- the spoon rest, in all it’s hideous tackiness, was crushed “accidentally” several times by a hammer on the back deck last night. So was the cd. It’s tragic really.

(for the regular readers, this post goes out to someone else, obvs.)

Sent to me by the awesome Sylvia, who I love.

I think I’ve groused up some peeps before with my belief that charity bites. I think we use charity to make the government less responsible to the people. Feel good altruism replaces real progression to a a more just society.

Now this doesn’t mean I think people should stop being kind to each other or helping each other out when situations arise. Lord knows I’ve benefited greatly from the kindness of friends and strangers alike. Those acts have literally kept me and the Kid afloat. But wouldn’t it be better if our government did it’s job of ensuring domestic tranquility by making sure everyone has a safe home and enough food than by relying on the arbitrary nature of good deeds?

Professor What If has a fabulous series on “What if you could buy social justice?” and her latest piece is on Oprah’s Big Give. Oprah may be the best example of how charity is just not enough to make for social justice.

In addition to the celebrified glitz of the show and the emphasis that money can fix all problems, there was a marked lack of social critique. As argued in “The dark underside of Oprah’s Big Give, “by Linda Diebel, “when competitors tried to buy away the problems of two schools in Houston, Texas, “not one contestant turned to another and asked how such bleak Dickensian conditions could exist in American schools in the first place.”

Similarly, the systematic, institutionalized conditions of poverty, homelessness, lack of healthcare, etc, were not examined on OBG. Rather, the show relied on a Horatio Alger model, trying to save the world by pulling up one individual bootstrap at a time.

Those damn bootstraps. You know, if you have over 17 million (and climbing, I think my numbers come from the 2000 census) people in poverty and millions of working families who have to rely on food banks and charities just to make sure their kids can eat, then it is not a problem that can be solved one bootstrap at a time. It is not a matter of massive individual failings but a systemic problem that can only be fixed by changing the system. Currently the system is made up of a patchwork of government programs and private charities. This is not working. And we’ve already tried the all charity route (see anything before 1929) and that didn’t work either.

So you can’t get social justice by giving away a bunch of money. Honestly, I would prefer if Oprah just paid the highest tax bracket she could with no deductions and then lobbied congress for more aid to the poor. That might actually accomplish what charities can’t.